given to oneselves is intuitively appealing and has been actually practiced, since a
person/university/country typically is biased in favor of itself. This short paper shows that this
apparently reasonable principle of self-exclusion may give unacceptable rankings. In
particular, it may rank B over A despite the fact that everyone including B ranks A over B. An
impossibility theorem (in two versions) is proved, showing that, if the self-awarded marks are …